“We hired an ox team to carry our baggage & started for this place then called Hangtown, from the fact that three persons had been hung here for stealing & attempting to murder.”

-Robert Glass Cleland
October, 1850

“Welcome to Dry Diggins,” the sign says as you approach the town, but someone has gouged out the town’s name and carved below it, “Hangtown”.

You’ve never seen anything like this.

The shantytown looks like it was built from canvas. The dozen or so ramshackle structures — dry goods stores, a bank, small markets, a butcher shop, a hotel — look like they were designed by children.

Row after row of tents line the riverbed.  The river teems with activity, men shaking sluice boxes, teams loading long toms, and entire crews manipulating giant hydraulic sluices.  You had heard about placer mining on the overland trail, but the sight of all this ad hoc mining technology leaves you awestruck.

HYDRAULIC SLUICE: A PLACER MINE MACHINE OF COLUMNS, PULLEYS, AND WOOD BOXES. DONKEYS ARE LOADED WITH BAGS OF ORE.

You’re tired and thirsty from the nine-mile hike, and you’re down to three dollars.  You head into the El Dorado Hotel for a cold drink.

The air is thick with cigar smoke, the room loud with angry and inebriated prospectors.

You find a stool at the bar and order a rum shrub.

“Got a wagon’s load of ice this morning from San Francisco,” the bartender explains.  “Would be twenty cents in a glass, or a dollar ten with ice.”

You opt for the ice, taking tiny sips and savoring every glacial drop of the drink that cost you a week’s pay back home.

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